![]() And ET also osmosed all the music I grew up on, all the icons and legends as well. ![]() By this time OD was playing as much guitar as piano. And he started playing with his friend, ET, a guitarist. He would sit down and play the slow songs from Pet Sounds on the piano with the real harmonies. Our conversations were something along the line of: “I listened to JWHarding and early Stones yesterday.” “Wow, weird day.” He internalized the entire repertoire. It still sounded that good, in comparison to all the great music of that era, both to my ears and to his. From the Association to the Zombies, from Eli & the 13th to Astral Weeks, from the Sounds of Silence to - well, Chrysalis. We went through the entire repertoire, Buddy Holly to Van Dyke Parks. Over the next 10 years, I taught him all the music I knew. He was doing some sort of project on the Beatles and was sent to me as a reputed expert. His talent was widely praised, his personality widely scorned. He was a tall, emaciated, brilliant musician (composer, pianist), obnoxious, non-communicative, anti-social. At one point, I met a young man, OD, who at the time was in the 9th grade. Then my life took me very far away from that scene, from all the great music, famous and obscure alike. What was I thinking? 1986, the Middle East I wrote an extensive, imaginary interview with Daoud, and published it. I wrote music reviews for the university paper back then. I showed the album cover to my father, who really thought it was me. He said they were really excellent, and that the Arab drummer, Daoud Shaar really was my doppleganger. and his girlfriend (the goofy rich one from NYC) to travel across state to some small college town to see them. ‘I opened (the door) for my beloved, but my beloved had slipped away his speaking had taken my breath away–I sought him, but could not find him, I called him but he didn’t answer.’ (Song of Songs, 5:6, my translation). The curve which approaches the line but never intersects with it. The very obscurity of the band elevated them to some sort of a symbol for me, though of what I’m not really sure. But Chrysalis has their own unique and unforgettable sound and vision. I guess the closest thing would be The Zombies ‘Odessey & Oracle’ or Traffic’s ‘Mr Fantasy’. If we had to categorize it, it would be witty, melodic acid rock. It sold many dozens of copies throughout the Western hemisphere, mostly to the band member’s families and friends (the close ones, anyway), and to me.ġ967, the year of “Sgt Pepper”, “John Wesley Harding”, and Jeff is listening to Chrysalis’s “Definition”, an album filled with wit and passion and clever arrangements and indelible memories and stunningly sharp performances and just about any superlative I can think of. Spider Barbour, made one marvelous album and broke up. ![]() That was enough to send yours truly scrounging through record bins in remote shopping centers till the LP was unearthed.Ĭhrysalis was formed in 1967, led by J. Somewhere, probably in a microscopic footnote in a Mothers album liner notes, Zappa called C hrysalis “a group that has yet to destroy your mind”. I was a very early devotee of Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, in the days when that was a dubious distinction certain to evoke the concern of parents, the disgust of the respectable citizenry of Cincinnati, and the utter disdain of girls who bathed. Only a bizarre chain of events in which real life and fantasy intertwine in their ironic and inextricable way.Ĭhrysalis, the greatest band no one has ever heard of. #EASY RIDER CHILLICOTHE 2015 FULL#The story as I tell it is full of detours, tangents, and irrelevencies, so don’t expect a “well-made” dramatic storyline here. What can you do? It’s a long story, spanning over 50 years and two hemispheres, the stranger-than-fiction tale of an utterly obscure artist, his music, J. This week’s SoTW is long, even by my shaggy dog standards. SoTW: Chrysalis, Summer in Your Savage Eyes Forewarning ![]()
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